Glimpsing into 1940

This past week was filled with scouring the 1940 Census to see what and who I can find. To be honest, it started out extremely frustrating when on Monday morning at 8:25 am I could not access anything on the website. I knew that there are bound to be problems with some of the website. But, I never expected to see nothing (and that was for over 12 hours).

At about 8:30 pm that night, I used my daughters computer and finally downloaded and ED that I was wanting to look at. Went to my computer to see if it would work and it did. I chalked this up to everyone being on Dear Myrtle’s webinar (which I am extremely happy that everyone was listening to her and giving me a break). I was ready to through all computers out the window. I know, I need a bit more patience and no I do not expect to finish my genealogy in one day. I just wanted to find 1 family and check the records out. Which I finally accomplished Monday night.

The first family I wanted to find was my German great grandparents, and I was successful. See image below.

Jaegar Family, living at 3710 Southport Ave, Chicago, IL

After that I wanted to find their daughter Ida, this is the first time she would be enumerated as a wife, and she would have two children with her. Well, I spent many hours searching and came up with nothing. I reached out to my aunt to see if she remembered where the family should be. She was kind enough to send me the address of the home from when she was in school. I used that address to find the ED and searched through it. I found grandma!!!! How excited, I even emailed a copy of the census record to that aunt and two more. See image below for Grandma!

On the next page, I found my grandfather. He will become Ida’s second husband on 11 Jan 1947. But, in 1940 he is still married to Janet and they are not living together.

Here’s Larry in 1940:

Larry O’Connell, living at 1458 Grace St., Chicago, IL

and finally, here is Janet and Bobby:

Janet and her son, Robert O’Connell, not sure of address at this point.

With Larry and Janet not living together, it is easy to assume that there was already marital problems. I wonder if any of them had an inkling of what was to come in the next seven years?